Hello, everyone, I'm stephen west. This is ballade supplies. This pete round shouts this week, Carl fuzzy, only matthew, morrison in gmos, zune Michael Michael in Derek purty. Thank you for all that you do philosophize philosophises dot. Org is the website for more information. Instagram philosophises podcast twitter is, I am stephen west. Also been posting three men eclipse of the park asked on youtube at philosophize this clips. The thinking is, maybe somebody doesn't have thirty minutes to invest in a panic, asked episode, but maybe they have three to see whether they like it or not. Anyway, it's a phenomenon we working on for the foreseeable future. So if you want to help you friend, stephen out and support that process again philosophize this clip on youtube. Today's episode is part to one susan contact. I hope you love the showed it so when one of our earlier essays susan contact talks about a life changing moment she experienced when she was just twelve years old

Now she described this moment when she wrote about it as a kind of revelation. In fact, she called it a type of epiphany that would go on to affect the direction of our thinking and her work for decades. Moving into the future, it was just I of nineteen forty five, she was browsing through a random bookstore in santa Monica california, and what she came across was something that she would later call quote a photographic inventory of ultimate horror. In quote what she came across for the first time, were pictures of the horrible things that were done to people and to have the concentration camps during the holocaust. The second world war, and you can just imagine or standing there, twelve years old in the middle of this book store looking at these pictures of mingled human, bodies taking in as a young person for the very first time, the darkness that people are capable of when their minds dip into this place. This passive state of compliance, but how to rent called the banality of evil is the first time in her life. She encountered this

and saw a hug leader writes about how she felt in that exact moment, she says, quote nothing I have seen in photographs or in real life ever cut me a sharply deeply instantaneously indeed it seems plausible to me to divide my life into two parts before I saw those photographs and after though it was several years before, I understand fully what they were about, some It had been reached, and not only that of horror, I felt I think a grieved wounded, but a part of my feeling started to tighten something went dead. Something is still crying in quote santa didn't know it at the time, but this type of experience that she had the bookstore She would later think of it as a classic experience that every person living in the modern world eventually has to have. We all eventually have to come face to face with images of horrible things that are going on in some distant part of the world, and then we gotta figure out what the best way is to deal with whatever feelings come up as a result of sea

Those images? This is a uniquely modern experience decisions on tax, in fact, the image itself is a uniquely modern thing that we all have to deal with. To put it simply as possible, we have a complicated relationship with images as modern, and its born out of a complicated, passed before being honest. Looking into the future with I created images on the horizon and among us things aren't we if you're getting easier anytime soon. So maybe it's time on this punk ass, we go on a little journey philosophical evaluation of the image more specifically, of pictures and videos as things that are by this point deeply normalized pieces of technology that we use every day as we go about our life and I our collective nobody

better to guide us along this journey. Then susan suntan see she was a huge fan of the work of roland bars. So we did to episodes of this part on a few years ago and if you remember from those episodes, one of the things he was most interested and analyzing in his work was what he thought of as a sort of modern mythology that we have today or the accepted metaphors that we attach to seemingly everyday things that help us give the meaning metaphors help our societies function at the end of the day, and he did this with everything. Even looks at the mythology surrounding something like soap, and how we always seem to be waging a war against this thing called uncleanliness in our homes and our lives, and our great soap is as the sort of nuclear weapon in that war. He talks about the mythology of programme selling at one point and how the messages that are being sent by these people that are pretending to fight each other on stage may actually help to maine pain, societal order at some distant level, point was to bars. It was important to look critically at these metaphors that we often take for granted

because in ways that aren't always entirely obvious to us. These metaphors actually have a high. Huge impact on the way the people see the things that make up the culture there, a part of song tactics, inspiration from this line of thinking and then makes it her own all throughout a career. She does something very similar to this shit. things that to us, as modern people are still normalized that we may never even really think about them, and then she, examined them. She, reinterprets than from a different perspective, and then brutally illustrates in her writing these social cost of having a lazy relationship with mythology of everyday things. What I'm saying is that, by the end of the episode here today, we will understand exactly what susan sound hag thinks about someone who just passively concern rooms, pictures and videos all day, putting in very little effort not even recognizing how complicated the relationship to the image really is so to get started on that susan's out. How might want to start by saying here?

that pictures and videos are obviously the primary method of communication in our modern world, but how many of us really speak, the language of pictures and videos and she's not asking Can you look at pictures and understand what they're about I mean? Obviously, people are saturated by them. What's on tax talking about is how many of us have really taken the time to break down what these kinds of images are and all the functions they serve and culture might be helpful to try to think but what we call an image like you come from an alien civilization that had just never used images to send information to each other before civilization evolved with really big ears or something. How do you think an alien species would see pictures and videos, but, aside from noticing that this is a lie people, get their entire understanding of what's going on outside their immediate surroundings. The other thing an alien might notice is at what a picture or video is at the most fundamental level.

is something that's designed to be a simplification of more complex modes of human experience. Now, what would the alien with big ears be talking about when they say that we'll take a photograph, for example? The thinking here applies. Even just a mathematical level, just from a raw mathematical perspective, whenever you're going from in dimensional representation of something to allow we're dimensional representation, is something You are losing a lot of information about it, so, in the case of a photograph when you go from a human experience. That's otherwise in three dimensions across a landscape of five different senses, various mental faculties, ear filtering at all through any reduce that sperience into two dimensional photograph to be purely miserable single sensor reform. Again, we have to start by alleging that you are simplifying that moment and losing a ton of information about it in the process What an alien might say about the concept of a pictures, and it's a pretty interesting thing. It is fundamental. something that takes complex situations and simplifies them into something that can be caught

assumed visually in an instant on that. We all know this. I mean a pictures worth a thousand words. People say right, that's what they do. But another thing an alien might want to point out is that, given the fact that a picture or video has to simplify reality in given our tendency to use these images, is the primary way that we connect with things that are happening in the world. Isn't it a bit problematic that the images also some that is so easily manipulated by people now before us on launches into her full blown critique of the image and it's role in society. The first thing she might want to start by saying that she's always looking at the image from a perspective of ambiguity. Chief fully acknowledges that images can be used for good as well as evil, which is also to say that on whose giving you the images that you're looking at this can be used to inform the population as well as to deceive the population. Some of this is beyond obvious to us living in two thousand twenty three, which I think speaks to. How dare Accurate susan, sound hag was about this. In her analysis, I don't think so.

tell anyone listening to this, about how many cool things you been able to see, because a pictures and videos that, in most other generations of being alive. You just never have the opportunity to see I mean the superbowl for us used to be that you grab a stick and It's raccoon around in your backyard. That was the cool stuff. You got to see This obviously extends from cool things that you see to things that are less fun. You also see pictures of distant political realities. Now natural disasters, war, famine, Susan sontag, would want to say that the connection to the events that pictures and videos can provide is on one level, truly inspirational, imagine the kind of awareness a person could have about what's going on in the world they live in if they were able to get access to images bout, what's going on in a way that they could trust, but that trust thing you see that that's where it starts to get a little complicated decisions on tax. Something else we all know in two thousand: twenty three is that pictures and videos are never presented to you in a totally unbiased way. Images are

we have given, you went away that tries to drum up a particular emotional response to them and santa would say this is part of the relationship you have with pictures and videos that you can never take for granted. Now, in certain cases, this can seem pretty harmless. It's not something we doubter really put too starting to think of an online dating profile. We all know the person sending you their picture wants you to think about them in a particular way they got. The lighting just right, they take a picture from a very specific angle, if you one of those people that have the exact same creepy smile in every picture, looks like they photoshop their smiling head into different settings. now and smiling in the mountains? Now I'm smile while holding a puppy, it's all very calculated by the person. Giving you the images- and we all accept this person's trying to get people to feel a certain way about them. All this seems fine about one that exact same thing goes on when you're, watching the news, the front that new stations put on The pictures they're showing you are an accurate representation of what's going on in the world, but almost like

with an online dating profile? Susan sonntag would want us to recognise that those pictures, the news giving you are hand selected to produce a certain emotional response as well and by the way that people that took the pictures I don't like they don't have agendas too, if the purse, making the online dating profile wants their pictures to look a certain way. A photographer also wants their pictures to look a certain way there always going for the big news story or sensationalism. There always taken pictures in the style of photography that they take their often considering what the chapter is in the narrative they ve been producing about whatever their taking pictures of point? Is it's not like? These photographers are buddhist monks out there in the field they have agendas as well and even the very presence of the camera, its self in reality changes what reality looks like the song tack, but knowing all that, even if that were not enough, then once the pictures get in the hands of the new station depending on new station that your watch him again. Try looking at this, like you're, coming from

other planet, where they dont have images? Consider just how much our go to method for representing reality can be manipulated to justify completely opposite outcomes. Images can reveal reality to people yes, but images also be stage to put out a false depiction of reality. Images can be used, to make people aware of new political voices. Yes, but images can also be used to slander, dissenting political voices, so they never get off the ground. Images can be used, promote stereotypes? I mean take your pick of what group your particular station wants you to demonize and enhance, elects pictures to get you to hate the more. But then again, images can also be used to give people a pig, side, another culture they'd never otherwise have, and maybe that fosters more respect between people. Maybe that leads to understanding images are used to get people riled up wanting to invade another country, taking pictures

giant building supposedly containing weapons of mass destruction. But for the? U s invaded iraq in two thousand three, then again, images are also used to frame public perception and away where people don't want to get involved. Think of a new station featuring pictures of a protest where people are burning the american flag, If there's any party the doubts, whether or not the emotional content of an image is determined by the way that its presented, two people consider the fact that even the exact same image presented in two different locations can take on two very different meanings, just because of the context that it's connected to, for example, image of a man kneeling during the national anthem of a football game in one place and images presented with certain captions, music and commentary behind it. That image is seen as an act of solidarity in protest.

It's police brutality, then again in another place with different captions music and commentary is seen as an act of disrespect to the flag and the military personnel who fight to protect it. Now again, that's the exact same picture, so sontag would want us to ask the question what percentage of a picture's meaning lies in it being a neutral snapshot of something that just occurred and what percentage of it lies and how the sure, specifically being presented to people pictures- are snapshots of an instant that man school rate as a documentation of reality when in fact, they are also always being used by people as amended relation of reality. They manipulate One of your emotions once again, like our alien friend from before said a picture or a video, is fundamentally something that takes a complex situation and simple. Is it into something that can be consumed visually in an instant now, knowing this, you can spend

our thinking about what people are really up to when they take a picture or a video. What is it that there really doing susan's on taxes and her book on photography? That pictures are both a pseudo presence and a token of absence, and what she saying is that whenever you take a picture or a video of some, think you're always constructing something in terms of the meaning of the picture, as well as obscuring some about reality that the picture can't possibly include she said quote, there is some, predatory in the act of taking a picture to photograph. People is to violate them. by seeing them as they never see themselves by having now image of them, they can never have it turns people into objects that can be symbolically possessed, in quote to susan sontag, to take a picture of something or someone is to objectify it in a way you are taking a moment freezing it and then turning into a thing that you or other people can then appropriate and use in whatever way you want now we're gonna exe

and on this more, but let's take this point by sound hag that two photographs, something is to objectify it as the first piece of evidence, she's gonna present in making her case that maybe one we're thinking about the problems we have with pictures and videos. Maybe the real problem lies in us as the p or that are receiving these images and assuming the pictures and videos have a lot more legitimacy than they actually deserve because she probably say why is this suddenly a problem with pictures and videos when it wasn't a problem in previous generations with paintings or the written word is a depiction of reality, while the reason it's a problem, she would say is because most people don't see a picture and think of as an artist depiction of reality. They see a picture and they just think of it. As the truth. We say things like this. We say picture it didn't happen. You know somebody says when you're out sick yesterday One of your coworkers got upon their desk naked and was screaming at everybody in the office and he say come on now believe that happened. But if Show you a video of it. Well, I guess that must have happened and it's a tough spot to be

he and his modern people, because on one hand we see a picture someone took and on one level This visual moment, as it is framed in this camera shot, did actually happen. But without critical thinking applied to the picture, on another level. You have no idea what you're, even looking at fact is pick tours and videos don't have to come with a disclaimer on them. That says everything. We've already said on this episode. As Susan sontag says, a picture doesn't need to come with a caption on it. That says this is the truth. The people looking at the picture or the video just assume that it's the truth on a level they never did with paintings of the written word and if you say back to this well, not me not me, I'm not one of these morons that just accepts things as the truth well to use when a song takes one rebuttals to this kind of person. She'd probably want to say back to them pay. So when you watch a video or see a picture, something that you think is really cool and then afterwards you find out that it was completely fake or stage. Are you disappoint when you hear about that. Little bit what why are you disappointed

bringing to the image a stamp of legitimacy that are probably doesn't deserve. Yet I mean knowing it as we do when twenty two thousand and three about how images are used to get you to feel a certain way. Why would everyone not be taking every image they see with a grain of salt at first and that's part of our larger point here? You know if any portion of this episode so far has come off, like it's obvious to you like, of course, images always have an agenda behind them. Then why do so many intelligent people continue living their lives, consuming content every day, giving images a free pass on any level when you're shopping for a car and a used car salesman comes up to you and starts telling you about the car you're looking at is perfect for you you're thinking. Oh really, really! Is that what the car is? The car is perfect for me how you're always looking for what his angle is and rightfully so, because he's trying to sell you something when an advertisement comes on you're thinking. What are they trying to sell me and how are they trying to sell it? This is a healthy way of thinking about these interactions, but whenever a picture or a video was presented to you too Susan sontag, you should

putting those images to a similar type of critical analysis, the default orientation towards anything. That's claiming to represent complex reality in two dimensional image form should be one where you're asking follow up questions. You should at least be asking who is giving me this image. Why are they giving me this image? What They want me to feel having seen this image. How was this image being presented to me? How was it edited, knowing that a picture is always obscuring something what might be obscured about reality. If I took this picture to be the gospel truth, look human beings have learned to adapt and survive in a lot of different environments over the course of history. We ve to survive from the serengeti all the way to the arctic tundra buildings, I mean you have to survive, and now is one where you are safe, created by images that are trying to get you to feel a certain way and if you dont develop in practice this critical thinking about the images that you're consuming and then bring those skills to every moment. You're always gonna, be at the

mercy of the person it's giving you your images? Think of what it was like to be a person and more the western world, before the protestant reformation for your access to scripture, in other words your access to what you consider to be the truth about reality around you that was available to you through a priest who spoke the language that the bible was written in whether or not what the dubious I was actually in the bible or not. You had no way to verify. You just have to be at the mercy of what he said was written down. We need, start thinking of our ability to read the images around us in a similar way. We need to hold ourselves to a higher standard suntan thanks, and I know I know you, you go to work all day its super. hearing, you just want to go home and be able to relax. I just want to look at my phone and have a little break wind down and watch the shows that tell me what's going on in the world? I get, but it's not good enough to susan contact she's, calling on us to be better she's, calling on us to put in the effort to speak the lake which of this new technology were using everyday called pictures and video to apply

same level of criticism you would to the used car salesman or else except your fate as someone that's just getting finessed every day of your life. Now, if that was something you wanted to do, maintaining this level of awareness is not just knowing the specific tactics people use when giving you images that we talked about earlier. The other half of this design tag is to also try to understand your relationship to the images in a social and ethical context as well to because something else you want us to recognise that it is not just the way a picture or video was framed and distributed. The can affect the way of your receives it, but part of the context of anything that people consume is the frequency that they are consuming it. So knowing that, in the case of pictures and videos when it comes to seeing images of things like violence and war and the suffering of other people things we care about. That might shock us like sonntag was shocked and the bookstore when she was twelve. It would be one thing to susan sonntag if we saw a picture of video like that once every year or so

but again the reality of the world we live in is we are saturated by images like that, and what happens on is that when other people's pain, that's going on somewhere else in the world when that becomes a routine normal part of your day. You naturally become desensitize to it. People NASH, we try to find some way to down regulate their emotional response. She says quote: we can't process all the evil, we can be exposed to end quote and it becomes next to impossible for these aims. Just to affect us emotionally in the same way that they use to now their normal to us couple this with the abyss. We have as members of western culture in particular, where we have the sort of hollywood muscle that we ve developed. Since we were kids, we have this ability, transform anything that we see on one of these screens into something that's purely a spectacle. We have. This emotional distance were everything's viewed by us through a screen, so whenever seems quite real to us another great.

sonntag has at one point is that in the western world we all have the luxury of patronising reality, and you can understand what she's. Coming from what that statement, I mean we have going on right now. The most photographed war in the history of the world and some people in the western world wake up every morning and what their relationship to this conflict has become Is it there excited to turn on the news every day in here the most recent update on all the horrific tragedies that are going on somewhere else, as though this is a tv show or a movie that their into that's, if, after being a year into it, they're still even into the tv show or if they moved on to others. tv shows. We have the luxury of patronising reality to sonntag, because we're not One of the people that actually has to live in it. This drowning of our emotional response due to over saturation by violent imagery, is something we always need to critically. Look out for us

well because another thing, an alien from another planet might think is really interesting about this technology of pictures and videos is how they can produce and people that are passively consuming them almost completely opposite responses. They can produce. Mobs of people were frothing at the mouth to carry out some Persons, political ends, running back, clamouring to their image dealer like there are methadone clinic saunter access. The modern world turns people into image junkies. That's one thing: do but, on the other hand, the alien might say this technology. The image can also be used to turn people apathetic to make people feel They have a false sense of familiarity with the suffering of others and then to feel satisfied with just feeling sympathy for the people we see in pictures, rather than actually doing something about it. She says

in this next quote, I'm going to read but then lays down the sontag hammer, and the next line right after that she says quote thinking about images of suffering is not the same as doing anything about suffering. To treat the images of suffering as equivalent to the suffering itself is to participate in a cult of nostalgia, in quote, and it's right here that her critique of the way that we usually erect with images, is gonna overlap with the critique she has of the way we interact with reality more generally in the modern world. Remember if part of. Modern mythology is that images legit my reality for us. We see them as the truth. Almost the same, way that scripture legitimizes reality for religious person, then it's not surprising from the perspective of song pack that this would produce what she's calling here. Something like a cult of nostalgia, Think about it. How common is it for a modern person to equate having an experience but taking a picture of themselves having an experience, how communism but a look back on what they ve done in their lives by referencing, a giant collection of pictures that they have on their phone life for this,

and a person travelling or doing noteworthy things becomes more about a process of collecting pictures of the stuff. They ve done does about actually living the moments therein. The focal point of this person's life then becomes about the past. Be primary concern becomes about commemoration tucson tag. Its remembering, instead of doing no more than that in a second, but I know, there's gotta be someone out there thinking well. That sounds like a bit of a cartoonish example. I mean who really goes around their life and they got a camera with a lanyard around her neck, so they don't lose. It noted snap and pictures of everything oh there, we're leaving any the moments that they're in, but isn't it possible to do, and I do this person may ask when I try to live the moment first as deeply as I can, and then I snap a picture at the end of it. So I got some to browse through later, as the geriatric care professional has given me a sponge bath later in life ok sure sure, but another angle that sonntag might want you to consider here is that when you have this urge as a modern person that just have to commit

rate this moment with a photo or else something's gonna be lost about it recognised that you are also lose something of the moment just by commemorating it meaning when you take a picture again, it's not like you just taken a neutral snapshot of some events, there are occurring around you. You are losing part of the moment that you are capturing, in fact, susan sound, in a way you are killing the moment that your capturing you are killing the moments ability to be Anything other than what it currently is that you ve person reason want to seize control of with a picture you wanna take one What's going on right now, reduce it down into a picture and then preservative now the hide sitting on the shelf in your phone, she says quote just as the camera is a celebration of the gun to photograph. Someone is a sublimated murder, a soft murder all photographs are memento. Mori to take a photograph is to participate in another person's or thing's mortality, vulnerability, mute!

billowy, precisely by slicing out this moment and freezing it. All photographs testified at times relentless melt, end quote and again. If we try to step outside the perspective of the modern person for a second, why would the visual simplified commemoration of the moment ever be more in port to you than your full experience of the moment in the present. Both there certainly many explanations for this. But one of them is that you are a member of a cult of nostalgia. The focal point of your life is on commemorating the past, as opposed to changing the present. Your memories are more important to you than your dreams, remakes of the same old shows and movies from the past rehashing of the same troops from old songs events or gains from past. All of this matters more to someone in a cult of nostalgia than a folk, on re, imagining or reinterred things in a new light. In the most extreme cases, the collection of pictures on someone's phone becomes not a collection of moments that were fully lived, but a collection of moments that they almost

lived that we're tragically cut short by the fixation they had to commemorate it, because the picture of the moment is what legitimizes it to them. You could say the technology the picture or video enables you to have a false sense of familiarity with the past events of your life. To the point where you look back on women never really feel like you missed out on anything about. The experience may can probably see where this is going to Susan sonntag. This general attitude then gets applied to the way the modern member of the cult of nostalgia sees the suffering of other people. They equate seeing the images of people suffering with knowing the suffering of other people see pictures or videos of what's going on, allows them to feel a false since a familiarity with what other people are going through. Then they think as long as it can you to see images of the suffering that's going on educating themselves, they call it and as long as they post, hashtag never forget being an activist, they call it. as long as the commemorate, what went on with these other people that have suffered and share the images with other people as a deluded cult member, they actually feel for doing this

as the legal gittin mice, the suffering of others. By making a sarcastic post on social media, they actually are able to believe they ve done something substantive there. Sometime would say we have fallen into a place as a society where we focused far too much on come immigration not enough on contemplation. In other words, we focus on remembering things instead of doing things and passively uncritically consuming these pictures and videos, people give us enables us to do this- and we carry this emotionally, disconnected complicit attitude around with us in a lot of different things, but one maybe unexpected place. You can see it she says, is in Knowledge that surrounds our modern concept of a museum not exactly sure it is common knowledge that everybody knows about. So I apologise if this is gratuitous but fun facts the origins of the modern museum actually come from hundreds of years ago and rich people that we're living in europe. At the time that had these things called curiosity cabinets, the idea, is of your rich person living you're in the age of exploration, and are these

people travelling all over the world, bringing back these artifacts their mysterious to everyone and these murders set are trying to make some money off the stuff come after you and say. Oh, this is a magic lamp from India that I found this is a dragon bone that we found in the caribbean if you're a rick. person, and you want to have something interesting to show guess when they come over to your house for dinner. You just bought this kind of stuff dragon bone. You say I guess I'll put that in my curiosity cabinet and it wasn't just dragon bones. It was a lot of real stuff to point. Is this was a cabinet the small selection of old stuff bankrolled by the social elite fuelled by just into actual curiosity, and then there was usually fun narrative that goes along with the artifacts. It tells an interesting story about how the world is out there on the seven seas or how the history of the world came to be the where we are now. These artifacts are part of that story. Well to susan sound, had the experience of the modern person in a museum. Today is not entirely unlike this. You show up your pay twenty bucks

and you walk around the halls very quietly, looking at all this stuff that someone else has the resources to collect you're, given a particular narrative about the history of the world, and how will this stuff fits into the narrative and then you'll leave the museum feeling just a little more cultured than you were when you walked into the entrance. That's the mythology connected. going to a museum, in other words a bunch of culturally privileged people. That's us pay money to go, satisfy their intellectual, amusement and other, given an over simplified narrowed of how these things in the museum fit into past events, and then you can leave the museum and pat yourself on the back for understanding things more. You leave the museum The feeling that watches over you is, but wasn't that interesting. But there's not a single reason of the world's contact thinks it. If the mythology surrounding the museum was different, the average person leaves. The museum might instead feel fired up about a new perspective. They have things about taking action in the world they live in, imagine museum that was centred around not just an inert commemoration of things that have happened in the past, but instead

museum that focuses on taking an artifact dignan. watching the way that it's usually perceived, but also knowledge and the many other perspectives could be viewing this thing through. That would change your entire view of it picture how differently Some are living in the united states felt about the berlin wall, as opposed to some of them in east germany now apply that to every artifact in a museum and add in tons of alternative perspectives that would allow people to understand their history more broadly feel more connected to their history, nah simone veil. They might receive the universe more openly rather than trying to project a homogenized world beyond onto it. there's no reason to Susan, sound hag by someone leaving a museum doesn't have an entirely new perspective on the world of the present day, There's, no reason why the experience somebody pays for when they go to a museum can't be for them to shake off emotional distance between them and the events of the world in the past, not just, adding another layer of separation, there's no reason why a copy about shaking people out of complicity with an oversimplified narrative, not giving the more of a narrative attack on

there's, no reason why we have to continue with this mythology that board when you go to a museum of then that means just a moron. You know it's not because of the insufferable self gratification. and that's going on all around you gross. No, no, it's it's because you lack the intellectual sophistication to be amused by this curiosity cabinet and for Museums are missing out on a big opportunity there she thinks, but anyway, to wrap up this episode today. Sonntag says at one point quote: passion is an unstable emotion, it needs to be translated into action or it withers and quote we can. Not be satisfied with just remembering the suffering of other people? We can't just sit around thinking about. It things like museums, documentaries, pictures and videos that we look at our phones. These are things that, if we're not critical about the way that we engage with them all the time they allow us to fall deeper and deeper into this cult of nostalgia.

Again the students contact. We are in a constant fight against this numbness, this apathy from our overexposure two things, but there were also want accosted. against people who are trying to manipulate your emotions by presenting images in a particular way- and I guess One thing is for sure to her passively, I through your life, taking this content in, like us, just some pleasure, the thing that your enjoying understand the consequences of now being critical of your relationship to pictures and videos. We are Oh somebody, who's, not putting in any effort in that area, and you can see the evidence of it in these simple toxic way that they often view other people. What level of effort are you putting it? but pictures and videos are just one example of a technology we use the design. Tiger, so normalized in our lives that we may be under thinking it on the next episode of the podcast, which will be out by the end of the month,

we'll be looking at another example of what you could call a modern technology that we'd normalized susan, sound hag is going to offer a critique of the metaphor and, more specifically, how our use of the metaphor impacts the way the people understand and talk about things like illness and disease. Because of the way we passively consume. Images goes on to her people in ways that we never intended. The way that we passively use metaphors goes on to hurt people that are suffering from things like cancer. On the next episode, we're about to see what happens when one of the great american cultural critics of all time gets us to question the specific ways that we use language to describe things that we don't truly understand. Thank you for listening I'll talk to you next time. Thank you so much for supporting the podcast. I can never do this without your help. Philosophize this dot org for more ways to do that. Have a good rest of your day.